The Gilded Hour (61 page)

I
N
THE
YEARS
since Anna came to the New Amsterdam she had heard the emergency alarm go off just three times: once for a fire in the next building; once when a staircase collapsed, casting dozens of orphans to a cobblestone courtyard; and the last time when an omnibus and a delivery wagon collided right in front of their door. She was introducing Elise to the nursing matron when the alarm sounded again, the rough clanging of the bell being yanked, and hard, from the porter’s desk in the entry hall.

There were rules for how staff conducted themselves when the alarm rang; first and foremost, the patients must not be unduly alarmed. Nurses and orderlies stayed in the wards until they got further instructions, and they kept the halls and stairways clear. Doctors and nurses not currently with patients walked as quickly as they could without breaking into a run.

Anna explained this to Elise as they made their way downstairs, voices raised around them as people wondered out loud what had happened.

They came into the lobby to find a total lack of chaos. There were a half-dozen children, and every one of them was surrounded by staff. Anna would have turned back and stayed out of the way—there was no obvious need for a surgeon, as of yet—but for the sight of Jack, his face bloody and his clothes torn. A nurse was taking a boy of about five years out of one crooked arm. The other hand he had fisted in the shirt of a wild-eyed boy about twelve.

She saw that he was not seriously hurt, but she went to him anyway. The matron grabbed Elise and took her off somewhere else, a baptism by fire.

He said, “There was a panic on the new bridge; somebody tripped on the stair and somebody else screamed and started a stampede. I saw it from the el platform. It was all over in a half hour, but what a mess.
Marron, che macello.
Maybe twenty dead, kids torn away from their parents. I stopped a wagon and piled these six in. Broken bones, but nothing life-threatening, I don’t think.”

While he talked she pulled his head down so she could look at his pupils and examine his scalp for lacerations.

“Not my blood,” he said. “There was plenty to go around, but none of it is mine.”

He drew in a deep breath and seemed to notice for the first time that he had a death grip on a boy who had all the markings of a street arab, from his bare feet and ragged clothes and hollow cheeks to an expression as black and hard as a frightened dog. But there was no sign of injury at all, save for a bruise on a cheekbone.

“And who is this?”

“Ah. This would be Jem O’Malley, also known as Trotter, grandson of Jem O’Malley, also known as Porker, of the Boodle gang. Porker masterminded the hijack of a two-hundred-pound pig from a butcher’s shop—” He shook the boy. “When was it, Trotter?”

The boy bared a mouthful of rotten teeth in something approximating a grin. “Eighteen hundred and sixty-two, the first of September. We celebrate it every year.”

Jack grimaced. “The industrious younger members of the Boodle gang decided to take advantage of hundreds of people crushed half to death by helping themselves to wallets and pocketbooks and watches and the like. Trotter here didn’t trot away fast enough, so he’s off to the Tombs.”

“Fine by me,” the boy said. “Could use a rest.”

Jack’s expression wasn’t hard to read, disgust and exasperation layered on top of each other. He glanced around the lobby. “I’ll let the patrolmen match up these little ones with their folks. Be back here in an hour to walk you home.”

And then he was gone before Anna could say even one more word.

•   •   •

S
HE
EXPECTED
HIM
to come back in a dark mood, but there was no sign of that at all; beyond the torn clothes it might have been any normal day. More than that, Jack recognized the former Sister Mary Augustin right away, which Anna found just a little irritating. His powers of observation were superior to her own in some very specific ways that had to do with his
profession: he had an uncanny memory for faces, something she had never been very good at for reasons Aunt Quinlan would attribute to her introverted nature.

He gave them what news he had about the trouble at the new bridge. “Panic,” he said. “One person falls, another person screams, ‘The bridge is coming down!’ And they’re off like a herd of buffalo across the prairie.”

There were twelve confirmed dead, and twice as many injured, many of those in hospitals, from St. Vincent’s to Bellevue. To Elise he said, “An exciting day to move into the city, though I’m sure you could have done without it. I wonder what Mrs. Lee has got for dinner; I am starving.”

Anna told Jack about Elise’s plans, drawing her into the conversation wherever possible.

“Sophie’s room is available,” Anna said to her. “You are welcome to stay until you’ve gotten settled. You may want to live in the nurses’ boardinghouse for convenience alone. But I can predict with some confidence that my aunt will ask you to stay on.”

She paused. “Another thing is your clothes. You’ll need new—”

“Everything,” Elise supplied. “This dress is ugly, I know. But my funds are also extremely limited.”

Jack said, “We’ll cover your expenses until you get your first pay envelope. It would be our pleasure.”

Elise dropped her eyes and looked away, apparently embarrassed by Jack’s offer. Anna was trying to sort out the reason for it, but Jack got there first.

“Of course,” he said. “You don’t have any way of knowing. There’s nothing improper about the offer. I managed to persuade Anna to marry me, just this past Saturday. So you see, you’re not the only one with surprising news.”

“Oh,” Elise said, flustered. “May I—should I—wish you every happiness?”

“Thank you,” Anna said, almost as embarrassed as Elise was herself.

“It’s very good of you to wish Anna every happiness,” Jack said with a grin. “But you’re supposed to congratulate me. Apparently it’s rude to do it the other way around, or so my sisters claim.”

“She’s confused enough as it is,” Anna said. “Have mercy.”

“No, it’s all right. I have to learn. So I congratulate you, Detective Sergeant Mezzanotte, and wish Dr. Savard every happiness.”

Elise Mercier was practical, intelligent, and eager to learn, and Anna sensed in her a steadfast dedication. Women who pursued medicine as a profession had to be stubborn, but most of all they had to have the courage of their convictions. It seemed to her that Elise did. She hoped she was right.

She was saying, “And I would be thankful if you would help me with a few dresses and a pair of shoes—” She looked at her feet with a slightly bemused expression. “And I will, of course, repay everything. Including room and board, for as long as I stay with you. If you are really sure.”

Anna said, “I am really sure, and I know Aunt Quinlan and Mrs. Lee will both be very happy to have you. Mr. and Mrs. Lee are Catholic, so you won’t be entirely out of familiar territory.”

Some of the color left the girl’s face. “They won’t approve.”

“They will approve,” Anna said. “I can promise you that much. What I can’t promise you is that Aunt Quinlan will take any money from you, no matter how long you stay. If anything is likely to put her in a sour mood, it would be you insisting on paying her for room and board. She won’t have it.”

Elise glanced at Jack as if looking for confirmation. Jack nodded, to the girl’s obvious discomfort.

Whatever awkwardness Elise might have worried about, her concerns were put to rest by Aunt Quinlan’s inability to be surprised or put out by the arrival of an unannounced houseguest. Of course Elise was welcome to stay, and how nice it would be to have her. Mrs. Lee went off straightaway to make sure Sophie’s old room was ready, Mr. Lee took her valises up, and the little Russo girls did cartwheels of joy to see her again. The news that she wasn’t going away again anytime soon had them hatching plans. They waited impatiently through an impromptu family meeting over tea where the adults discussed practicalities, and then they pounced. Elise must have the grand tour, without delay.

“Do not run that young lady off her feet,” Mrs. Lee called after them. “She’s had a long day.”

But Anna was less worried. It seemed to her that Rosa and Lia would provide the perfect introduction to a usual household.

•   •   •

E
LISE
HAD
NO
objections to being dragged off by the Russo sisters. They dashed up to an attic filled with boxes and crates and trunks, each one full of treasure, Lia assured her, and worked their way down, floor by floor. She
was firm in her unwillingness to be shown personal rooms other than the one they shared. They wanted her to admire the pretty quilt on the bed, the view out the window, the cushions on the window seat, the wardrobe filled with neat piles of little girls’ clothes. She complimented Lia’s dolls and Rosa’s first attempts at needlework. Then they were off again to see the bathrooms and the wondrous plumbing—they still could not fathom the miracle of water, hot or cold, at the turn of a tap, and the toilet was to them a magical convenience. Elise admitted that she was almost as unfamiliar as they were with this invention, which won her a fierce smile from Rosa. She had passed some test without realizing how closely she was being examined.

Back downstairs she saw the little parlor, the dining room, the main parlor, the kitchen and pantry. They would have shown her the cellar, too, but Mrs. Lee put a stop to that plan. In the garden she admired the neat rows of beanpoles, the cabbage and carrot and turnip plantings, the apple and pear trees, the flower garden already full of color and bees hard at work. They were especially proud of the enclosed porch they called a pergola, with its reclining couch and chairs and table.

She was not spared the stable or the little cottage where Mr. and Mrs. Lee lived, or even the henhouse, where she was introduced to eight setting hens and a rooster who demanded respect and distance both, she was told. Elise might have explained that she had grown up on a farm and knew all about roosters, but it gave them such joy to instruct her, she kept her silence except to make encouraging sounds.

There was a short debate on whether they should take her to a place they called
Weeds
. Before Elise could ask for clarification she was hurried through a rounded wooden door set in the garden wall into another garden, this one bare except for ancient grapevines over a collapsing trellis, a small greenhouse engulfed in ivy, and a few apple and holly trees. The soil had been recently turned, and the smells of compost and manure were strong in the air. The girls pulled her into another house that was being made over for Dr. Savard and the detective sergeant, this one stripped down to its bones as the garden had been. They showed her every room, with colorful commentary about how many children would fit into the bedrooms; the new bathtub, as big as a pond; the lace at the windows; and neat stacks of sheets and towels in the linen closet.

By the time they got back to Roses—now Elise had caught on to the Weeds and Roses names—dinner was on the table, and her stomach gave a terrific growl that made the girls first startle and then laugh with delight. Even at the table they were full of life and talk and stories, very different little girls from the ones she had first met in Hoboken and cared for at the orphanage. They weren’t scolded for their talkativeness, Elise thought, because their silence was inevitable, secured by the combination of healthy appetites and good food on the table.

There was a soup thick with dumplings and a roast of pork, pickled red cabbage and potatoes mashed with butter and milk which they were instructed to enjoy because, Mrs. Lee told them, there would be no more until the new crop of spuds came in late in the summer. The garden was the topic of conversation for a good time and Elise took her part in the discussion, but she also had the distinct idea that they were all holding back, waiting for her to catch her breath and volunteer the stories they hesitated to ask for.

The middle-aged woman Anna had introduced as her cousin Margaret stole looks at Elise every time she took a bite of food. And that was signal enough. She put down her napkin and said, “You are all very kind, but I know you are wondering about me.”

“Well,” Lia piped right up. “I was wondering about your dress and your shoes and if you lost your bonnet, the white one that made your eyes look so blue.”

Mrs. Quinlan said, “All interesting questions. But I think we should take turns, and Elise will answer only some of them. We don’t want to use up all her stories right away.”

“That’s all right, Mrs. Quinlan,” Elise said.

“Oh, no,” said Lia, as if Elise had committed some terrible breach of etiquette. “You have to call her Aunt Quinlan. Everybody does. But you don’t get punished if you forget,” Lia reassured her.

The girls thought of her not as a grown-up, not even as a woman, but as a creature out of her element, someone who was as new to this world as they were. And in that they weren’t entirely wrong.

Anna said, “That rule doesn’t apply to everyone. I’ll bet Elise has aunts of her own.”